Parenting

Jewish Camp is a valuable way for interfaith families to learn and share in the joy of Judaism in a comfortable, fun and meaningful environment. See which camps identify as welcoming to interfaith families.

Organizations

Connecting Interfaith Families to Jewish Life in Greater Cleveland by providing programs and opportunities for interfaith families to experience Judaism in a variety of venues, meet other interfaith families, and to connect to other Jewish organizations that may serve their needs.

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This is an interactive, fun, and low-key workshop for couples who are dating, engaged or recently married. The sessions will give you a chance to ask questions about faith, to think about where you are as an adult with your own spirituality and to talk through what's important to you and your partner.

For Program Providers

A great way for Jewish professionals and volunteers who work with and provide programming for people in interfaith relationships to locate resources and trainings to build more welcome into their Jewish communities; connect with and learn from each other; and publicize and enhance their programs and services.

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A Shame That It Takes a Tragedy

Yesterday Benjamin Maron put up a blog post about the awful attack on US Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Everyone at InterfaithFamily.com, like most people, feels terribly about what happened in Tucson.

The violent incident in itself is not something that we would ordinarily comment about. (My personal view that there should be a huge outcry about gun control isnâ€™t something that is an issue for InterfaithFamily.com either.) If Congresswoman Giffords didnâ€™t have an interfaith family background, we wouldn’t have commented. But she does, and we thought it would be interest to our readers, and in part it was our way of expressing our distress.

The mission of InterfaithFamily.com is to empower people in interfaith relationships to engage in Jewish life and make Jewish choices. There are so many interfaith couples that are potentially interested in Jewish life, we want to present information that will attract them to give it a try. When a person of celebrity comes from or is in an interfaith relationship and is engaged Jewishly, we want to let our site visitors know, because it may trigger interest or steps in that direction. From all accounts, Gabrielle Giffords is a very wonderful person in the public eye, who came from an interfaith family — her father is Jewish, her mother is not — and was not raised very Jewishly and yet chose to identify Jewishly as an adult. We think it’s important for our readers to know that.

There is another significance to the Giffords story that is very relevant to IFF’s advocacy work for more welcoming of interfaith families by Jewish communities. Thankfully Gabrielle Giffords apparently was not greeted, when she decided to get more Jewishly involved, with an attitude that she was not welcome, she was not “really” Jewish, etc. In that regard, the Jerusalem Post ran a very important editorial yesterday. The Post, not exactly known to be liberal on intermarriage issues, basically says that Giffords should be considered to be a Jew â€“ even though she is not halachically Jewish.

Some of the Postâ€™s language is striking. They say for example that Giffords â€śactively embraced Judaismâ€ť after a 2001 trip to Israel â€“ this about a person who has not converted. They also say that the â€śbroadening definition of Jewishness is not restricted to the Reform movement,â€ś citing a paper about halachically non-Jewish offspring of intermarried parents not being excluded from Conservative congregations. The editorial concludes:

Is it conceivable to exclude Giffords, another â€śnon-Jew,â€ť who is so unequivocally Jewish? With all our desire for a universally accepted definition of â€śWho is a Jew?â€ť that would unify the Jewish people, we cannot ignore the complicated reality that many â€śnon-Jewsâ€ť are much more Jewish than their â€śJewishâ€ť fellows. Congresswoman Giffords is one of them.

The flip side of IFF’s work trying to attract people in interfaith relationships to Jewish life is that Jewish communities need to welcome them. Itâ€™s a shame that it takes a tragedy like this one for leading Jewish commentators to come to that conclusion.

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One thought on “A Shame That It Takes a Tragedy”

but for the Jerusalem Post to even consider Congresswoman Giffords to be not a Jew, when her rabbi and congregation can attest that she is very much a Jew (the gorgeous photo of her chupa being held by her husband’s fellow naval officers being one sign of that) is simply stupid, wrong and painful.

As a life long Reform Jew, whose daughter has a Christian mother, but condiers herself, as she absolutly is, a Jew, I resent those whose think their beliefs are more signicant than mine and that they get to dtermine who is and who is not Jewish.